Having grown up worshipping Sam Burgess, Warrington’s young England forward Matty Nicholson is counting down the days to now work with the rugby league icon.
Legendary enforcer Burgess, one of the great pack men of his generation, takes up the Wolves head coach role in 2024. Warrington hope the hard-hitting ex-England captain, who’s towering displays for his country, Bradford and South Sydney inspired so many, will finally bring some steel to their fragile squad. And second-row Nicholson, 20, has double reason to get excited.
He admitted: “Sam Burgess is a massive idol of mine. Growing up he’s the person I watched most especially given we play similar positions. I’ll never forget that try he scored in the 2013 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand. And as an English lad going over there (to Australia ) and doing what he did with Souths was unbelievable.
“I can’t wait to get to work under him and hopefully learn lots of new things. It’s pretty surreal to now know he’ll be coaching us.”
Burgess, 34, famously played on with a broken cheekbone suffered in the first tackle of the match to help Souths win the 2014 NRL Grand Final - their first championship in 43 years. Warrington still haven’t claimed the league title since 1955 and are now huge outsiders this year, despite winning their first eight games under Daryl Powell. They fell off the pace catastrophically and he was given the boot after last month's 42-6 hammering at bottom-placed Wakefield.
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Gary Chambers is in interim-charge for the rest of the season and - in danger of missing out on the play-offs altogether - they need to end a seven-game losing run at Leeds on Sunday. Powell had earmarked Nicholson, who made his England debut against France in April, to switch to loose forward next term given they have signed Newcastle Knights second-row Lachlan Fitzgibbon for 2024. Burgess often switched between those two positions as well as prop and it will be interesting to see where he decides to play the impressive ex-Wigan player.
Warrington Wolves' Matty Nicholson (Richard Walker/ProSports/REX/Shutterstock)Nicholson said: “I spoke to Powelly about it when he was here. That was his plan. But obviously we’ve got a new coach coming in now so plans might change. It’s something I’d like to do. I played loose forward in my academy days and I’m fine with it. I think I prefer it. You touch the ball a lot more. Sometimes on the edge you struggle to do that. But I’ll play wherever needed. The main thing now is to get winning again. We see this as a fresh start and an opportunity to start our season over.”
Nicholson, recently back from a ten-week lay-off for a finger injury, said: “Leeds are a bit similar to us: they've been inconsistent and Sunday’s a must-win game for both of us now.”
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